Game|Life Podcast: TwilightPrincess Versus TheWitness

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On this week’s Game|Life podcast, we discuss one game that’s being altered to be more inviting to players, Nintendo’s impending HD remake of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, and one that seems very much to want to make players feel unwelcome, that is, The Witness.

Jake Muncy joins in to chat about these games, Nintendo rumors (…is Mother 3 really happening?) and his impressions of PAX South in San Antonio, Texas.

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Game|Life Podcast: Making the Nintendo Switch

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Were you wondering what the Game|Life podcast crew thinks about the Nintendo Switch? Wonder no longer, for here are TIME’s Matt Peckham, WIRED’s Julie Muncy, and me to tell you all about it: Our impressions of the games, of the platform, how we think it’ll do out there on the market, and also some stuff about Fire Emblem. And why I think they should just rename it the “Nintendo Chris Kohler.”
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Game|Life Podcast: MarioRun, LastGuardian and More

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What a couple of weeks it’s been! First we had the back-to-back releases of two games we’d been waiting for for a decade, The Last Guardian and Final Fantasy XV. Then, if you thought the year was done with surprises, we got Super Mario Run, Nintendo’s first Mario game on mobile devices.

Time’s Matt Peckham joins me for this year-end spectacular, discussing these three games, plus a bit about what we think will happen with Nintendo’s Switch when it’s unveiled in early January.

Game|Life Podcast: So… Titanfall2, or CallofDuty?

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Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. Titanfall 2. Dishonored 2. So many games, so little time. What should you play? WIRED’s Jake Muncy has played all three (just a few hours of Dishonored 2, though), so I take this opportunity to quiz her on the results of Blockbuster Brawl 2016.

Game|Life Podcast: Nintendo Switches It On

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Nintendo Switch is the talk of the day on this episode of the Game|Life Podcast. But would you expect anything else?

It’s so nice to be able to say that what was formerly known as the Nintendo NX is, in fact, exactly what we suspected it was: a tablet that docks to your TV. Now that we know exactly what it is, we can talk about what Nintendo didn’t say today, and what that might mean. Do those Joy-Cons have motion sensors in them? (Maybe.) Is that screen a touch screen? (It’s gotta be.)
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Game|Life Podcast: MafiaIII, GearsofWar4, and Lots of VR

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Oh man, it’s October, isn’t it? That means there’s way too much happening in videogames to keep up with. So many virtual realities.

On this week’s Game|Life Podcast, Jake Muncy and Matt Peckham discuss Mafia III, out today. Jake’s been playing Gears of War 4. Matt and I have been playing PlayStation VR, and talk about Thumper in a little more depth than I think we expected. And I, fresh back from Oculus Connect, add some more details to my story about Lone Echo.

Game|Life Podcast: From Tokyo to Virginia

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Chris is back from Tokyo Game Show and has some thoughts on virtual reality, Final Fantasy XV, Rez Infinite, and more.

Meanwhile, TIME’s Matt Peckham has played the new indie game Virginia and also the new Destiny expansion Rise of Iron—or, well, he tried to, anyway. It’s all on this week’s Game|Life Podcast.
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Game|Life Podcast: What a Weird Day for Videogames, Huh?

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Still reeling from the announcements of Wednesday? You’re not alone. From Nintendo partnering up with Apple for Super Mario Run on iPhone, to the upgraded PlayStation 4 Pro, it was a non-stop day of news.

WIRED’s Jake Muncy and I are joined once again by Time’s Matt Peckham on today’s Game|Life podcast to discuss everything that went down, and what this all means for Nintendo, Apple, Sony, Microsoft, and you. Mostly you.
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Game|Life Podcast: Nintendo Plans the Last Days of Nintendo 3DS

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Nintendo NX is almost here—I know, it’s unbelievable, but remember, it’s launching in March!—and that means the slow winding down of the Nintendo 3DS. And the Wii U, too, of course, but it’s 3DS that Nintendo focused on in its latest Nintendo Direct, announcing a few more games for the aging handheld.

All of them have a little bit of weirdness to them. There’s a port of the Wii U game Yoshi’s Woolly World that heavily features the tongue-lolling dog-thing Poochy (unless he dies on the way back to his home planet). There’s Super Mario Maker with no online level sharing. There’s a new Pikmin… but the real-time strategy has been traded in for Mario-ish side-scrolling action.

All in all, as I argue on this week’s Game|Life podcast, it’s a very safe lineup from Nintendo—taking as few risks as possible, attempting to provide 3DS software that could sell very well while still reserving the majority of its effort for the launch of NX.

After calming me down about Nintendo, as is their job, WIRED’s Jake Muncy and TIME’s Matt Peckham discuss Obduction, the new puzzle adventure game from the creators of Myst.
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Game|Life Podcast: NoMan’sSky, DeusEx and Other Controversies

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There’s lots to talk about on this week’s episode of the Game|Life podcast, from Deus Ex to No Man’s Sky to Final Fantasy XV and more.

Cut features! Delays! And did you hear that Call of Duty: Black Ops III is the third best-selling PlayStation 4 game of all time… in Japan? Why is everything so weird? Jake Muncy and I break it all down for you.
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Game|Life Podcast: Abzu and Other Indie Games We Love

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Yes, of course we talk about the recent reports from Eurogamer about the Nintendo NX on this week’s Game|Life podcast. But also, Matt Peckham of TIME is on hand to discuss the new indie game Abzu, and Jake Muncy is here to run down the basics of Quadrilateral Cowboy.

Game|Life Podcast: These Games Aren’t as Good as We’d Hoped

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We were really looking forward to Song of the Deep from Insomniac and I Am Setsuna from Square Enix, and both games do have some excellent qualities by which the Game|Life podcast crew can recommend them. But neither turned out quite as good as we’d hoped.

Game|Life Podcast: Delving Deep Into Inside‘s Darkest Secrets

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It’s the Inside spoilercast! It’s tough to discuss Playdead’s new game without spoiling at least something, and it doesn’t really take that long to play, so Matt Peckham, Jake Muncy and I decided to just go for it and talk about everything—the ending, the secrets, everything. Lots to discuss!

But before that, we chat about the new System Shock Kickstarter and a little bit about Adventures of Mana. Then we warn you when to turn the audio off if you don’t want to get Inside-spoiled.
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Game|Life Podcast: What Bad MightyNo.9 Reviews Mean for the Future of Gaming Kickstarters

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Finally decompressed from E3, the Game|Life podcast crew sits down to talk about what we experienced on the final day of the big show, from VR Batman to Horizon: Zero Dawn and more.

Then it’s on to a discussion of Kickstarter and gaming. Mighty No. 9, crowdfunded to over $3 million and much-delayed, is finally available, but most fans seem disappointed. What does that mean for future crowdfunding efforts?
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Game|Life Podcast: It’s The Gigantic E3 Expo Episode

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A very special episode of the Game|Life podcast! TIME’s Matt Peckham joined WIRED’s Jake Muncy and I in actual physical meatspace together for the first time at this year’s E3 Expo, and we’ve recorded a rollicking show together. We moved as quickly as we could through all of the different games, announcements, and experiences we partook in at this year’s annual trade extravaganza for the video game biz, and still it ended up being about two and a half hours long.

So settle in for the Godfather of videogame podcasts—we promise1 it’s worth it! (And forgive us our audio-quality sins, as we recorded this in a hotel room with a portable voice recorder.)

Game|Life Podcast: The Games We’re Psyched To Play at E3

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It’s the last Game|Life podcast before E3, which means it’s the official Pre-E3 Podcast! Matt Peckham and Jake Muncy join me to discuss the games we’re most looking forward to playing at the big show in Los Angeles next week.

Game|Life Podcast: The Future of Plastic Gaming Toys

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Is Skylanders making a move towards a future in which it needs fewer plastic toys to stay alive? Who’s at fault for Rock Band 4‘s stumbles, Harmonix or Mad Catz? And what are our first impressions of Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst?

Each and every one of these questions are answered by myself, Matt Peckham, and/or Jake Muncy on this week’s Game|Life podcast. We hope we have answered them to your satisfaction.
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Game|Life Podcast: Our Uncharted4 Adventure Journal

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One of us played Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End on Easy. Another played it on “Crushing” difficulty. We discuss the differences (and similarities) between our playthroughs of next week’s highly anticipated PlayStation 4 game on this week’s Game|Life podcast.

Time’s Matt Peckham and WIRED’s Jake Muncy join me as usual for (mostly spoiler-free) Uncharted discussion, after a rundown of some more Nintendo news, plus Electronic Arts’ announcement of the World War I shooter Battlefield 1 and why that’s a little bit odd.
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Game|Life Podcast: Sorry, But Nintendo’s Only Showing Zelda at E3

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Lots of crazy Nintendo news this week: Zelda is delayed again, to March 2017. We know it’s coming out for Nintendo’s new NX game machine as well as the Wii U, but NX isn’t going to make an appearance at this year’s E3 Expo in June. What’s more, Nintendo says the only game playable at its E3 booth will be Zelda.

Does any of this make sense? Perhaps Nintendo’s making the best of a bad situation. Time’s Matt Peckham and WIRED contributor Jake Muncy join me on the Game|Life Podcast this week for an analysis of the most recent Nintendo news.
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Game|Life Podcast: Our Favorite VR Games So Far, From Puzzles to Tower Defense

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Virtual reality is finally a reality, in the sense that consumers finally own the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. (Or, you know, you’re on a giant waiting list with no end in sight.) On this episode of the Game|Life podcast, Time’s Matt Peckham joins in and we run down our favorite VR experiences so far, and talk about what makes a good VR game versus a bad VR game.

Going off on a bit of a tangent, we talk about the idea that Microsoft and Sony might be introducing slightly-better game consoles soon, getting players into an incremental upgrade cycle.

Game|Life Podcast: FinalFantasyXV‘s Early Victory Party

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Final Fantasy XV’s lavish release-date announcement party, Microsoft’s new Xbox One game and Nintendo’s first smartphone app are today’s topics on the Game|Life Podcast.

Time magazine’s Matt Peckham joins Jake Muncy and me to talk about our reactions to the “Uncovered” event that seemed to be a six-months-early victory party for the next Final Fantasy game, plus our feelings about Quantum Break and Miitomo.
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Game|Life Podcast: Hold on to Your Butts—DarkSoulsIII Is Almost Here

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The voraciousness with which the Internet set upon those faked photos of the Nintendo NX is our first topic of discussion on this week’s Game|Life podcast, followed by Jake Muncy’s initial explorations into Bandai Namco’s highly anticipated Dark Souls III. (It’s nearly available here in the U.S., but you can play it on Xbox One right now if you set your regional settings to Japan.)

Talking about Nintendo and Dark Souls pretty much ran us out of time, so Matt Peckham and I take just a moment at the end to talk about one of the more interesting virtual reality experiences I had at Game Developers Conference last week.
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Game|Life Podcast: TheDivision, Hitman and More

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Lots of games on this week’s Game|Life podcast! TIME’s Matt Peckham and WIRED’s Jake Muncy have been playing a lot of Tom Clancy’s The Division, and they attempt to convince me that I should play it too.

Jake’s also spent a little bit of time with Square Enix’s new episodic Hitman, I’ve built a level using keys and doors in Super Mario Maker, and I wish I could give some extra dollars to the makers of Peter Panic on iOS in exchange for more songs.
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Game|Life Podcast: Superhot and Other Awesome Games

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On this week’s Game|Life Podcast, we talk about videogames! Specifically: Jake Muncy and Time gaming editor Matt Peckham have been playing Superhot and Far Cry Primal, and have an enjoyable discussion about those, largely without me, who didn’t play them. But I did play Star Fox Zero, and Matt actually spoke to Shigeru Miyamoto about it, so we have a lot to say there, too.
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Game|Life Podcast: Why Penn Jillette’s Getting Into Videogames

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At the DICE Summit this week, I got the chance to talk with Penn Jillette, one half of Penn & Teller, and Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford, following their keynote presentation. The pair are working together on a new version, with some virtual reality elements, of the classic Desert Bus. Their session at DICE focused on how game developers can use principles of magic in their designs.

After a few minutes of conversation, I realized I wanted to share the whole session with everyone. So on this episode of the Game|Life Podcast, it’s the whole interview. To call it “wide-ranging” might undersell it a bit. Here’s some of what you can expect:

Desert Bus

Hillary Clinton

Janet Reno

Virtual Reality, Shakespeare, and politics

The Music Man

The time Penn met Notch

The Residents

Guarding magical secrets

The Internet as world-peace engine

Fake lottery tickets

And more. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did, and thanks to Jillette and Pitchford for joining in.

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What was going on in Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, the PlayStation 4 game by The Chinese Room released last year? I had a lot of thoughts about the message that this game was trying to convey, but I held a lot of them back at the time of its release for fear of “spoilers.”

Well, the statute of limitations on that is quite up, and more to the point, I haven’t been able to find other analyses of the game that get at what I was taking away from it. Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture tackles one of the great questions of human existence—coming to terms with the inevitability of death—and gives us a metaphor to help us think about it. It can be a profound experience, aided by one of the greatest (and most impactful, in terms of its literary connection to the game’s message) original musical scores in recent memory.

On this episode of the Game|Life podcast, Jake Muncy and TIME’s Matt Peckham join in for a no-holds barred pull-apart of Rapture. But first, we do some relatively spoiler-free Firewatch discussion.
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Game|Life Podcast: TheWitness and Nintendo NX Speculation

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Are we close to finally hearing some details of Nintendo’s upcoming “NX” platform? There are certainly a lot of leaks and rumors coming out about it, which would tend to indicate that Nintendo is getting close to announcing something about the new dedicated game machine that it’s often said it planned to discuss at some point in 2016.

TIME’s Matt Peckham joins me on this episode of the Game|Life podcast to discuss the NX rumors and what it might all mean, what we might hear at Nintendo’s upcoming financial briefing on February 2, and of course what we both think about Jonathan Blow’s The Witness, because you pretty much have to talk about that these days on gaming podcasts.

Game|Life Podcast: Some Like It Brutally Difficult

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I don’t do difficult games, but Jake Muncy certainly does, and so he’s here on the Game|Life podcast to discuss Darkest Dungeon. I meanwhile tell him about Oxenfree, which it would be difficult to not be able to finish in a few hours.

Riding the line between easy and hard is Super Mario Advance 4, recently released on Virtual Console for Wii U. A souped-up version of Super Mario Bros. 3, the Virtual Console version contains the extra levels that were only distributed via collectible trading cards, and some of them only in Japan. Some are incredibly easy, and some are quite difficult!